Something You Should Know - Can You Be Bored to Death? & Why Thrill Seekers Seek Thrills

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

What if you were convinced you got a good night’s sleep even if you didn’t? It turns out what you believe can actually determine if you do or don’t feel tired the next day. How can this possibly be true? This episode starts with an explanation which could be very useful one day when you didn’t sleep well. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24417326/ Many times in your life you have felt totally bored. What exactly is boredom? Is it a feeling or maybe it is a lack of a feeling? Does feeling bored ever serve a purpose? Then there is that phrase, “I’m bored to death.” Can that actually happen – death by boredom? Here for a fascinating discussion on the topic of boredom is psychologist James Danckert, author of the book, Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom (https://amzn.to/3ePmnsq). On one end of the scale are thrill seekers and daredevils who jump out of airplanes or climb dangerous mountains. On the other end of the scale are people who would rather stay home and read a book by the fire. What is the difference? What cause thrill seekers to do what they do? What is it they gain from those experiences? That is what Ken Carter is here to reveal. Ken is a board-certified clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Oxford College of Emory University and author of the book Buzz!: Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies (https://amzn.to/35FIwCn) One day your car’s check engine light will come on. It’s a pretty vague warning that doesn’t tell you much. What could it be? Sometimes it’s nothing. In fact, often it is nothing. Listen as I reveal one of the most likely reasons it comes on and the simple fix. Source: Phil Edmonston author of The Lemon-Aid Car Guide (https://amzn.to/33wtJaC) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's code happy me at happy mammoth.com for 15% off your entire first order. Today on something you should know, you really can convince yourself you're not tired, even if you are. Then, why do we get bored? What is boredom and what's it trying to tell us? There's two words that I think are most commonly expressed by people when they report being bored, and that's agitation and restlessness. And that gets back to this idea that when you're bored, you want to be doing something. It's not being apathetic or lazy.

You want something, but you just can't figure out what that is. Also, the problem with being a perfectionist and the toll it takes on your health. And daredevils, thrill seekers, why do they do what they do? I think a lot of people think of thrill-seeking as something a person does. but I think of it as who a person is. It can affect their work, it can affect the foods they like, the things they do for fun, and what kind of traveling they like to do. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Hi, I'm Adam Gidwitz, host of Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmist. On every episode, we tell a grim fairy tale. Not the cute, sweet versions of the fairy tales that your children have heard so many times. No. We tell the real grim fairy tales. They're funny. They're weird. Sometimes they're a little bit scary. But don't worry. We rate every episode grim, grim, grimmer, or grimist. So you, your child, your family can choose the episode that's the right level of scary for you. Tune in to Grim, Grimmer, Grimmist, and our new season, available now. Something You Should Know. Fascinating Intel. The world's top experts. And practical. advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to Something You Should Know. So have you ever had trouble sleeping, or maybe you

stayed out late the night before, and felt really tired the next day? And as a result, you didn't perform very well at work or whatever it is you were doing. Well, you should know about something called placebo sleep. According to a research, study, people who were basically tricked into believing they got plenty of sleep even when they didn't perform just fine on cognitive tests and tasks. And people who thought they didn't get much sleep, even though they did, perform poorly. In other words, just like a placebo pill, if you believe you got enough sleep, you should do fine. Your mind and body will perform as if you did. And if you keep telling yourself you didn't sleep well and you're really tired and you can't

do your work, you probably won't do very well. And that is something you should know. People have been asking for a while now about a premium ad-free version of something you should know. I know a lot of podcasts offer that. And so, now do we. You can now listen to all the episodes, even the back catalog, without ads, plus exclusive premium content for $3.99 a month, even less with an annual subscription. Check out the details at S-Y-S-K-Premium.com. That link is also in the show notes. That's S-Y-S-K-Premium.com for ad-free listening and exclusive content.

I can imagine you might be thinking just how interesting can a discussion on boredom be? Well, very interesting, as it turns out. boredom is a universal experience. Everyone gets bored. Is that a good thing? Does boredom serve a purpose? What's boredom trying to tell you, if anything? What's the difference between being bored and just having some downtime where you're really not doing anything? And you know how people say they're bored to death? Can you really be bored to death? Well, to address all this is James Dankert. He is a professor of psychology at the University. University of Waterloo, and he's an expert in the psychology of boredom.

James is the author of a book called Out of My Skull, the Psychology of Bortem. Hey, James, welcome. Hi, Mike, it's great to be here. So here's a question I've wondered about. Is boredom a thing, or is boredom a lack of something? It's a great question. Bortem is kind of both, in some sense. It's a motivational signal.

Bortem is something that's sort of telling us that we want something. but it's the lack of something because it's also sort of making evident to us that we don't know what we want. So the quote I love the most comes from Leo Tolstow that is that boredom is the desire for desires. When we're bored, we really want to be engaged with something that matters to us that's meaningful to us, but we don't like any of the options in front of us and we don't know how to move forward. I know you say that some people claim to never be bored, but how can that be because those people are probably doing the same things, having the same experiences that the rest of us have that we consider boring, you know, waiting in line, waiting at the doctor's

office. I mean, objectively, these are pretty boring things. So how is it that some people are bored and other people are not bored? It's boring for most of us to contemplate those kinds of things. But for the people who claim never to be bored, they can do a range of different things. So they might just reframe what it is that they're doing. For example, people who are doing assembly line work, which many of us might think is kind of boring. You know, you're watching the widgets go by and doing your quality control or whatever you have to do, but it's the same thing, moment by moment, hour by hour. But there is evidence that people in those sorts of jobs will challenge themselves to better their personal best. Let's say, you know, I last hour,

I did eight widgets. Let's see if I can do nine this hour. So now something that seems to the outside to most of us to be boring has become reframed as a personal challenge. And so it isn't as boring to the person when they do that reframing. And there's a range of other things that people can do. Just sort of let your mind wander while you're in those kind of boring situations. And maybe as your mind is wandering and the task that you're doing is easy enough for you to do it without too much concentration, the mind wandering can help you be less bored. When people are bored, Is there something similar going on in everybody who's bored's head that makes it boring? Is there some thought process or something that puts them in the state of boredom?

The first thing I'd say about that is that boredom is a little like happiness in that way and that the content that makes us happy is unique to us. What makes me happy won't make you happy. And the same thing is true for boredom. What makes me bored? What makes me feel like I'm in a really ten. hideous situation might actually be something you find quite interesting. So the content is kind of irrelevant. If you're asking what's the kind of thought process, I think that for most

of us when we're in the middle of being bored in the middle of an episode of boredom, it's very self-focused. It's I'm bored. But then it's also, at the same time, directed outwardly. It's like there's nothing in the world that will work for me. So the world itself is boring too. But I think that's the only commonality I can really come up with, that what situations, what circumstances lead you to those feelings and those thoughts is probably going to be unique to each person. So it is, it's subjective. I mean, you're bored because you say so. It's not because what you're doing is necessarily objectively boring. It's just you've decided it's boring and therefore you're bored and then it seems like it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling and self-propelling prophecy.

It can become very much a self-fulfilling and self-propelling problem, a circular sort of problem, if you like, that you need to break out of that cycle of, I'm bored, this is boring, it's not working for me, and I'm still bored, what am I going to do, I'm bored, and it becomes very sort of a vicious cycle that's hard to break out of. But that doesn't mean that there aren't commonalities. The feeling itself, I think, is quite similar for everybody when they feel. So there's two words that I think are most commonly expressed by people when they report being bored, and that's agitation and restlessness. And that gets back to this idea that when you're bored, you want something. You want to be doing something. It's not at all like a couch potato or being apathetic or lazy.

You want something, but you just can't figure out what that is. And so it leads to those feelings of agitation and restlessness. Why? Because boredom seems to be just part of the human experience for most of us. you know, we're bored and then, you know, all of a sudden we're not bored anymore. Why study this? Why write a book about it? Why is this important? Well, I think it's important for lots of different reasons. The why I study it has sort of personal reasons I'm happy to chat about, but why it's important to study more generally is

because it has consequences. It's not just part of the furniture of life. It's a, it's a non-trivial problem to be bored a lot. So what are the kinds of consequences? that I'm talking about. There are consequences for education purposes, so we know that people who are bored a lot in school don't do as well. And that's from studies in high school students, particularly in math classes, and also from studies in university students. If you're bored a lot, you're disengaged from the material you're trying to learn, and so it becomes harder to learn it. We know also that there are strong associations with boredom and challenges for people's mental health. This has been known for decades. So people who,

are bored a lot also tend to have higher rates of depression and anxiety. There are other sort of challenges like increased rates of aggression that are commonly associated with people being bored. We know also that people who are bored a lot tend to have struggles with drugs and alcohol. And more recently there's been work showing that what we call problematic smartphone use. And when you describe this, it's very much like an addictive behavior. People who are anxious when they're not by their phone and people who ramp up how much they use their phone on a day-to-day basis. We know that boredom is actually one of the drivers of that problem. So it's not inconsequential. It might seem like it, particularly when a parent tells their child,

you know, there's a million things out there go, don't tell me you're bored, or only boring people get bored, but it's not trivial. It has a lot of these consequences that we'd rather not have. And so if we can understand boredom and understand how it leads to those consequences, then we'll be better off. So when somebody, let's take that example you gave of the student who's in math class and they're bored, because they just, for whatever reason, they're bored, what's the solution to that? The $64,000 question, how do we fix boredom?

There aren't great answers to that at this time because we haven't really done the studies, but there are a couple of things that I think are important. And this comes from that work by a guy called Reinhard Pekran who did that work in Germany with students in math classes. So there's two things that they suggest that are really critical to keep a student engaged and they're sort of control and value. What he means by those things is the control idea is we

need to give students some autonomy over their learning, right? You need to feel like you are in control of how the activity is progressing and how you're engaging with it. And then we need to show them the value of what it is that they're learning. So if a student feels like the thing that they're being taught at any moment is kind of pointless, then they'll disengage and become bored and then struggle to learn. And this is sort of true outside of a math class that what boredom often is showing

us is that we are not being very agentic. We're not demonstrating to ourselves that we are in control of our goals and that we're in control of what it is that we decide to do on a moment-to-moment basis. So that threat, you know, you're not being, you're not being the author of your own life that boredom sort of lays bare is true in a range of different circumstances and what we need to re-establish is that sense of agency that we are in control and then we also need to figure out well what's the meaning behind this thing that we're doing does it matter to me because if it doesn't it's likely that you're going to feel bored by it eventually our topic today is it's boredom but it's actually pretty interesting and my guest is james dankert he is author of the book

out of my skull, the psychology of boredom. Hey, it's Hilary Frank from The Longest Shortest Time, an award-winning podcast about parenthood and reproductive health. We talk about things like sex ed, birth control, pregnancy, bodily autonomy, and of course, kids of all ages. But you don't have to be a parent to listen. If you like surprising, funny, poignant stories about human relationships, and, you know, periods, the longest shortest time is for you.

Find us in any podcast app or at longest shortest time.com. Do you love Disney? Then you are going to love our hit podcast Disney Countdown. I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And I'm The Dapper Danielle. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we count down our top 10 lists of all things Disney. There is nothing we don't cover.

We are famous for rabbit holes, Disney theme games, and fun facts you didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you're looking for a healthy dose of Disney Magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts. So James, are there people who like being bored? Can boredom be a good thing? Or in order for boredom to be boredom, it has to be a negative experience.

If it's something you enjoy, then it's not boredom. We haven't asked that question specifically in our research. Do you like boredom? But the bulk of the research from our research from our research, Lab and many others shows that boredom is a negative experience. It's not one that anybody, you know, voluntarily reports as liking or engaging in. I have had a couple of occasions where people have told me that they do like boredom, just in, you know, conversation with friends and that kind of thing. But if you probe it, it's exactly as you say, it's not boredom that

they like. What they're actually liking is some downtime. And I think most of us like some downtime. time. But to call that boredom is to misunderstand what boredom really is, I think. You hear the phrase bored to death. Can you be bored to death? Can it kill you? No, boredom is not going to kill you. That's going to be an exaggeration. But there was a study out of the UK by Britain and Shipley in 2011, and they did some epidemiological work. They had data from UK civil servants from a number of decades. And in that data were questions of, are you bored by your work?

And what they were able to do was to follow up decades later on health outcomes for some of those people that said they were really, really bored at work. And it turned out in their study that you were more likely to die of heart disease if you reported being bored at work decades earlier. And I think that just ties into this notion that boredom is unpleasant and stressful.

And so if you're in a constant state, of stress and anxiety and agitation, that's not going to be good for your physical health. But it's not a, you know, it's not like a smoking causes cancer sort of link. It's not that big. Are people more bored today than in the past? Or I guess people have always, they've always been bored. It's not as though it's a modern phenomenon. It's something that's been with us for a long, long time.

And there's two other things I'd say about it. One is that that's not surprising if you think that boredom serves a purpose. us. If it plays a role in our lives, if it has a function, and I believe it does, then it should be with us throughout evolution. So that is that the function is to push us to act. It's to get us out of one situation and into another that we deem better somehow. So I don't think that it's somehow a modern phenomena. Whether or not, the question I think that your listeners might be more interested in is, you know, is it getting worse over the last two or three decades as we've seen the explosion of the internet and social media and so on.

People often assume, I think, that boredom might be getting either better because we've got the world at our fingertips on our phones or worse because we get sucked into the vortex of social media and so on. As I said before, there is that notion that our attachment to our phones and to social media is sometimes driven by boredom because it's a kind of passive form of engagement. It fills your time, it occupies your time and your mind, but it's not really that active and you're not really being a very sort of proactive agent

when you're just going down the Twitter rabbit hole. But there is one study at least from Elizabeth Webright and her colleagues that shows in high school students that over the last decade, boredom has been increasing and they were able to track the same students over a decade to show that indeed boredom has been getting worse over that decade. I think it was from 2007 to 2017. Now, they couldn't say anything about the causes of that, of why that might be happening, but I think it's a very interesting data point and something that we clearly need to do more

research on. Well, there does seem to be something about a connection between boredom and attention. We hear that people's attention spans have decreased and that they get easily bored for something that maybe prior to that, people wouldn't be so bored. There really is a strong connection between boredom and attention on a lot of different fronts. So when we just ask people questions like how often do you mind wander, we find that people who are highly prone to boredom also mind wander a lot. When we do tasks, so we bring them into the lab and we ask them to do what we call sort of sustained attention or vigilance tasks, these are tasks where you have to focus really hard to detect something that doesn't happen very often. Think about something like an air traffic controller's job where you're paying attention to things fairly constantly and so you have to be vigilant.

but things are not changing dramatically from one moment to the next. And we find that the bored and prone people do perform poorly on those kinds of tasks. They make more errors and they don't actually correct their performance after having made an error very well. So there's those associations. And we also know that people who are diagnosed with ADHD tend to be higher in boredom proneness as well. Now this is, again, these are relations, they're correlations, they're not causal things. things. No one would suggest that boredom causes ADHD. But the association is there that if you're struggling to focus your attention on whatever it is that you want to focus it on,

whatever is right in front of you right now, if you struggle to focus attention, then you are more susceptible to being bored. There is a bit of a challenge of, you know, the chicken and egg here, is it our attention wanes and so we get bored or we get bored and then our attention wanes. And we don't really know that the answer to that yet. That's also something that. that we're doing more research on right now. Well, when I look at boredom, I see it as basically a self-described condition. You're bored if you say you're bored.

You're bored if you feel you're bored. And the only way not to be bored is to fix it yourself. I mean, if you're bored, only you can unbore yourself. We do have that kind of judgment of it, don't we? Yeah, yeah. It is your fault. You know, if you're bored, then it's on you to fix it. And the truth of the matter is that's absolutely true.

You are the person that needs to solve your own boredom. And I think for many of people who are boredom prone, who experience it a lot and when they experience it, they experience it intensely, it's that that they struggle with, that failure to launch into action. They kind of want the world to come to them, and that's a much more passive way of trying to engage with the world and doesn't really work to solve your boredom. All of those problems I talked about earlier, things like problem, gambling, drug and alcohol use, problematic use of your smartphone, that's passively letting the world take your attention and occupy your attention.

And ultimately it doesn't work and can be harmful for things like gambling, obviously. So, yeah, we do as a, when we're bored and in the middle of that, in the throes of it, we are responsible. We do have to be the authors of our own path out of that boredom. And every parent has heard their kids say, I'm bored. There's nothing to do. And, you know, to tell them to go do something, it doesn't seem to work very well. So what about that? What about when kids are bored?

It's the common experience of people with young kids in particular that the child says, I'm bored. And what they're really saying is, I'm bored and I want you to fix it for me. It comes back to being the author of your own goals and actions. And so a lot of us as parents will choose. out these different ideas for things that they could do. You just said one yourself, go read a book, go ride your bike somewhere, go play with your Legos, go play basketball at the front with your brother or whatever. The problem with doing that is that the child has probably thought of all those things too.

That is the nature of them being bored. They've looked at the options available to them and said, nah, I don't want any of those. And so the response, you know, I'm not in the business of giving parenting advice, but the response that might work better is when your child says I'm bored to say, oh, well, and just let them try and figure it out themselves. Because once they do, then they'll have that in their arsenal. They'll have those tools to be able to figure out, okay, when this arises, I can go ahead and try X, Y, and Z, and maybe that will get me engaged again.

Another thing to do, particularly with teenagers and maybe younger kids as well, is in a moment when they're not bored, to sit down and talk to them about boredom and talk about a boredom plan. There was some work that came out recently in the pandemic that said that people who had a plan for their boredom actually coped a lot better during the pandemic and had better mental health outcomes. And that ought to work for your teenage kids as well

and for younger kids. So sit down and say, what things can we plan out for you to go to the next time that you're bored? And they have to buy into the plan, they have to drive the plan, they have to think of the ideas of things that they could do because it can't be you,

solving the problem for them. Well, I have to admit that I never would have thought of boredom as a topic to discuss on this podcast. I guess because my very first question to you was, you know, is boredom something or a lack of something? I've always kind of considered boredom as like a lack of something to do and not much to discuss. But obviously, based on our last 20-minute discussion here, boredom is something that we all need to understand. James Dankert has been my guest. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Waterloo, and the name of his book is Out of My Skull,

The Psychology of Boredom. And there's a link to his book at Amazon and the show notes. Thank you for being here, James. Appreciate it. No, thanks. Mike. It's been my pleasure. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa DeMontz, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong. Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. And Don't Blame Me, we tackle our release.

listeners dilemmas with hilariously honest advice. Then we have But Am I Wrong, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our listener poll results from But Am I Wrong. And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. some people are very cautious other people take huge risks in life and the rest of us are somewhere in the middle so those people who take the big risks who bungee jump and skydive and go on roller coasters why do they do it are they just different or do they really get joy and pleasure out of that risky behavior or maybe they just do it to say they did it Here to discuss what makes thrill seekers do what they do is Ken Carter. He's a board-certified clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Oxford College of Emory University. And he's author of the book, Buzz, Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies.

Hey, Ken. Thanks for having me. So there is this theory, I guess, people have, that thrill seekers are basically adrenaline junkies. They do risky things. They go on scary rides because they like that adrenaline hit. Interestingly, it's not necessarily adrenaline. So there are two different chemicals in our body that control, that influence our stress reaction. One is cortisol, that sort of stress hormone that a lot of people have heard about.

It sort of initiates the fight or flight response. And then there's another neurotransmitter called dopamine, and that creates a sense of pleasure. And so these people that we think of as thrill seekers or high sensation seekers actually have lower levels of cortisol, but higher levels of dopamine. So they feel more pleasure but less stress and, you know, during those high sensation seeking activities. So physiologically, they're a little bit different. Interestingly, though, people that I know that like roller coasters and like, you know, those kind of thrilling things that they do it's not like they crave them like if they don't get get it every day or every week that

that they start to jones for it it's just they like it when they get it yeah and so there are different sort of you know range of of sensation seeking so there are the low sensation seekers like like you and me who beach book is all i need to that's that's the most thrill i get and then they're the average sensation seekers that sound like the people that you know and then there are these high sensation seekers that really crave that. And if they aren't getting those experiences, it's really tough for them. And so a lot of them that are not doing that right now are having a tough time because some of them can have a tough time with boredom. And so they start doing things to create chaos because that's where that's sort of the sweet spot for them is sort of

chaotic excitement. So they do things like what? So, you know, there are some expensive ways to do thrill-seeking activities like, you know, bungee jumping or base diving, but there's some cheap ways to do it, too, like driving really fast in the highway or sort of picking fights with people, things that might get them into trouble. But there are some other things that they could do, for example, try unusual foods or these sort of cultural experiences that are sort of, that are not necessarily dangerous. but high sensation seekers tend to downplay those risks and so they can sometimes get themselves into trouble when they're looking for those sensations do people who seek thrills for example they'll bungee jump or they'll skydive or they'll do some thrill seeking behavior do they tend to seek out thrills in all areas of life or do they find a few things and they say i like that It depends upon a little bit.

There are two different aspects of that thrill-seeking personality in terms of the mix of things they like to do. Some are what are called thrill-and-adventure-seeking people. And then there's another one that's called experience-seeking. These are people that like sensations of the mind and of the senses. These are the people that travel to unusual places and try unusual foods. And so there may be some people, like I met this woman, who wanted to travel for three years. hundred days all around the world couch surfing on other people's sofas. Nothing that I would ever do. But she hates roller coasters, right? And so there are different aspects that people tend to

gravitate towards. And some high sensation seekers like both of those things, but they may find it in their jobs. Or if they don't, they're going to do it in their recreation. Is it safe to say that thrill seekers are generally risk takers? Yeah, interestingly, not necessarily. So risk taking is really the price of admission to what they want to do. And so if you've looked online, you see these people that climb these big buildings and they take these incredibly, you know, scary photos, they want the sensation of being on top of the building. And the only way you can get there is to climb to the top of the

building, right? And so they wouldn't do risky things just because they're risky. They do the risky things because it gets them the experience that they want. And the experience that they want is just that that rush, that feeling. That sense of awe. You know, we all enjoy that sense of awe, but it does, you know, things that bring awe are different for different people. For me, it's the beach, right? But for thrill seekers, they're going to want that experience that they can't get in any other way. So they're not necessarily risk-taking for the sake of being risky. They're doing the risk because it gets them the experience that they desire. You know what I wonder, because this is so subjective, do thrill-seekers,

see themselves as thrill seekers or do they just see themselves as normal and they see people who don't like the thrills they like is kind of dull? Yeah, it's an interesting sort of perception. So they did the study a couple of years ago where they put people on a track and they said, oh, follow the car in front of you. The low sensation seekers drove really far away from the target car and they were really anxious the entire time. The high sensation seekers drove oh like really really close to the person but they were totally chill and but when they asked people how dangerous they thought the experiment was they said they rated it about the same and so what makes us think that something is dangerous is usually our body that's

telling us what you're doing is dangerous stop doing it yeah that's that's really interesting because I wonder if that's one of the reasons that even though people know for example the texting and driving is dangerous. It doesn't necessarily feel dangerous when you're doing it. So it's like, yes, it's dangerous, but it's okay if I do it because it's not dangerous for me. Exactly, exactly. And the range of things that high sensation seekers feel is okay is much larger. There was a guy that contacted me a couple of months ago that said that he was thinking about sea kayaking around Iceland.

and wanted to know what I thought of it. And I said, you know, I'm not the person to ask. I think everything is dangerous. Well, that brings up the question. And I think an important question that I hope you can answer because there's this sense that people who don't like roller coasters or who don't want a bunchy jump or what, they need to try it. Yeah, it's going to be terrifying.

But if it's not you, then why would you try it? I mean so do you get if you do it a little bit do you like it a little bit and then you like it a little bit more? Because that's not my experience. Yeah, you know, there's a psychological concept that's called habituation, which means the more you do something that's scary, the less scary it is. And so that might create lower levels of cortisol that's that hormone that's related to fear, but I'm not going to like it more. Right. And so I just tell people I don't have have the hardware to run that program, you know. So high sensation seekers do. They're going to feel awe and thrill and excitement at those things. And they want me to experience the world the way they do. But I can't. You know, I'm not pumping out the same mix of chemicals as they are. I'm just going to feel terrified and overwhelmed. And I'd rather not feel that way. Yeah. And if you did it enough, you might feel less terrified and overwhelmed, but you're never going to feel. pleasure because that's just not in you. Yeah, exactly. And so I say find the mix of things that are

right for you, but I understand it from their perspective. It's the thing that brings them so much pleasure and thrill, and they want me to have experienced that too, but I probably won't. Well, I remember hearing that advice many years ago that, you know, when you go to the amusement park and everybody wants to go on the roller coaster and they say, come on, no, you're going to love it. No, I'm not. And so I don't, I don't feel compelled to go because I've heard some of what you've been saying here that it's just not me. And I don't enjoy it. So why would I do it? Yeah, I know the things that I enjoy. And a lot of the high sensation seekers say to me, you know, I know I'm not made of glass. It's okay to get hurt if you're going to have a

wonderful experience. But that's not on my list. Like if, you know, I was talking to one guy, who said when he's going to do something important and he's doing some bouldering or or those kinds of things he'll try not to do something that's going to break a leg and i thought you know i never do things that are going to be even remotely close to bringing me to breaking a leg you know that's just not my list of fun things to do so is being a thrill seeker just different and they're wired differently and they do different things because that's what makes them happy

or is there more to it than that? Are there some darker sides of thrill seeking that people don't often consider and you know breaking a leg might be one of them but or is it just people are different? You know it's people are different

but there are some influences that can change that over time. You know those chemicals in our body don't remain the same throughout our whole life. And we also have outside influences. And a lot of high sensation seekers tend to not be as high sensation seeking as they get older. Usually for two different reasons, the chemicals change. And also, there's more to lose. And so some of them, as they get older, will not do some of those thrill-seeking things because they want to protect their families or because they just don't feel like it as much because some of the chemicals have changed over time.

Is there any sense that thrill-seeking runs in families or doesn't run in families or it's just random or what? Yeah, it does tend to run in families. And researchers aren't quite sure whether or not is because those really thrilling experiences bring high sensation seeking out in people or there may be some genetic component to. it as well. You know, I talked to a food blogger a while ago who loves eating very unusual foods, which is typical a lot of high sensation seekers. And so they're feeding their kids those unusual foods as well. And that might mean that they're going to be more adventurousome with foods as they get older, or it might be because of the genetically they're similar and they're more likely to try those unusual things. Well, that word adventurousome, does that define thrill

seekers and if you're a thrill seeker, you're probably more adventurousome in other areas of your life, like foods you eat or places you go or whatever. Yeah, it's interesting because I think a lot of people think of thrill seeking as something a person does, but I think of it as who a person is. It can affect their work, it can affect the foods they like, the things they do for fun, even the jokes they like to tell, and what kind of traveling they like to do. You can see it in all different parts of a person's life. So I sense you were from the things you said, you're not a big thrill seeker, and yet you tackled this project on thrill seeking.

Are you more of a thrill seeker, happy not to be? Where are you? I thought that working on this project about thrill seeking would make me more of a thrill seeker, but it's actually made me embrace the things I've already done. You know, I might try an unusual thing every now and then, sort of influenced by the people I've talked to, but it also makes me realize that a lot of the people who bungee jump or base dive or eat unusual foods, that they're not necessarily doing it because they have a death wish or those kinds of things. They're seeking that sense of awe that we all do, but just in a different way. I wonder, and this is one of the things that thrill seekers will tell people who typically haven't sought out thrills, that, you know, you have to try it. Like, do people who don't like thrill seeking, seems like most of them have probably tried roller coasters or something that would, that they would get the message, nope, this isn't for me.

Yeah, yeah. And that happens relatively early on where you sort of know the range of things. that you want to to experience but a lot of those thrill seekers and you asked me about this earlier some of it that they were just trying to get mastery over their own emotions um i talked to this one woman she calls herself slackline girl and she you know uh does sort of type roping across these big ravines and for a while she was doing it um free solo with means with no um safety at all and she did it because she wanted to create some massive over her emotions in some way, which is something I would never do. And it seems incredibly

dangerous, but it seemed really important to her to be able to control her emotions in that way, which is really important for a lot of high sensation-seeking activities. Yeah, see, I don't get that. I don't understand. I understand wanting to master your emotions, but not at the risk of death. Yeah, no. I do very little at the risk of death myself. But if you don't, If your body's not telling you that it's dangerous, then your perception of it is going to be very different. And I get that intellectually. It's tough for me to get emotionally. I wonder if there's a difference between the kind of thrill seekers like you just described where someone, you know, walks on a wire across ravines without a net, that's really thrill-seeking.

That's very dangerous versus people who like. scary movies and roller coasters and things like that where they know they're safe they know it's scary but deep down inside they know they're not in danger yeah and so a lot of those people are at that middle average range of sensation seeking um and since i'm at the very low range of it i don't like scary movies i just you know i just have to close my eyes and try to get through it but lot of people who are in that average range, they are pumping out a really nice mix of cortisol and dopamine. So they're experiencing that pleasure and thrill from it. But they're not necessarily going to do things that are dangerous like Slackline Girl might. Yeah. So if SlackLine Girl does

what she does, if she goes on some big roller coaster at, you know, six flags or something, Does she go ho-hum, or is that because it's a new experience that still might be scary to her, even though she's not risking her life? She would probably be able to yawn or do a crosswork puzzle during a roller coaster. Yeah, she, you know, a lot of those sort of professional thrill seekers that are ice climbers and base jumpers, they might do roller coasters as a snack, but it's not going to be a main meal for them probably. So this really should be of comfort to people, particularly people who aren't especially big thrill seekers, to know that it's not a question of, you know,

your chicken or you're not brave enough. It's not bravery. It's more of a physiological or a fundamental difference. There are people who really enjoy it, and there are people who don't. One of the goals of psychology is understanding ourselves and understanding other people. And so I've gotten emails from people who say, you know,

this really helps me to understand my brother or my son or my spouse in a way. I was trying to get them to stop doing that because I thought it was foolhardy. But they need it because it's part of their personality. And we need them. You know, a lot of people who are first responders and firefighters and, you know, in the police and the military. these are high sensation seekers that are using their high sensation seeking to help the rest of us. So we need them in our society.

But I also think we need people like you and me who are lookouts to tell people maybe we shouldn't do things that are that dangerous very much. Well, it's really interesting because it's not right or wrong or good or bad. It's just either or. It's just some people like it, some people don't. and if you don't like it, why do it? And if you do like it, why not do it? Yeah, as long as it's safe and as long as you're not putting other people in danger, I think that's absolutely right.

What about gender differences? I assume slackline girl is a female, but I would imagine that testosterone plays a role in this and that there are more male thrill seekers than women, right? testosterone does play a role for both women and for men and interestingly for the 50 years of research in this area we've seen sensation-seeking levels get higher for women I think because of the role of culture you know I think that a lot of people thought you know women shouldn't do these kinds of things and so you would see higher levels of experience seeking in women but in the last couple of

years, that difference between men and women in terms of these thrill-seeking activities has actually gotten smaller. Well, there is also that pressure, though, when you know, when you're with a group of people and most, if not all of the other ones, you know, want to go on the roller coaster and you don't, then, you know, they, ah, don't be a baby. Come on, come on. But you're not going to like it. But there is that kind of like, you know, be a man, man up and do it.

You know, it's really interesting because we know that fear is something as a perception from your environment, you know, the chemicals that you're, you know, pumping out. And the way you think about that environment tells you what's, you know, frightening or not. And so I tell people, it's the low sensation seekers that are the brave ones. You know, if I'm doing that roller coaster, I'm going to feel more terrified than an average and or high sensation seeker. You know, you know, it's not the high sensation seeker who's being brave if they don't feel that what they're doing is dangerous. Well, it's good to hear that, and I think it's good for low sensation seekers to hear that it's okay to say no because there's no joy in it. There's just no, you're doing it and you're going to close your eyes and grit your teeth and feel like you're going to throw up the whole time. What would be the point of that? And on the other hand, if you're a thrill seeker and you can engage that and satisfy those thrill-seeking desires in a safe way. Well, there's nothing wrong with that either.

This has been really interesting. Ken Carter has been my guest. He's a board-certified clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Oxford College of Emory University. And he is author of the book Buzz, Inside the Minds of Thrill Seekers, Daredevil's, and Adrenaline Junkies. You'll find a link to his book in the show notes. Thank you, Ken. Yeah, thank you so much. It was really fun talking to you. If you've been driving a car for any length of time, sometime in your driving career, you've seen the check engine light come on.

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